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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27737431">High Stakes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adam Snaps, Agent Manuel Lopez is their current handler, Angst, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, I love Persian!Nate, M/M, Major Character Injury, Morgan Scowls, Nate Gets Hurt, Persian!Nate, Pre-Canon, Romance, Takes place a few decades before book 1, ay mi madre is something my mother says when she's exasperated so i let Lopez borrow it, if you want to adopt this fic go right ahead, pretentious drivel 2 vampire boogaloo, so here have some Persian!Nate</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 07:34:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,533</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27737431</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate gets hurt and Adam loses control.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Adam du Mortain/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell, Adam/Nate, Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell/Adam du Mortain</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Anonymous</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>High Stakes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>*kicks fic to the curb like an iron age father with a disappointing newborn*</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>It takes, Adam one day discovers, exactly five-tenths of a second for his life to nearly end.</p>
<p>Not his turning- no, that was a long, painful, blood-drenched night, a seemingly endless paroxysm of agony as his body unmade and remade itself at the whim of his sire. Not that he really remembers it anymore. Life, in his mind, is not burning buildings, dented armour, or red-splattered swords. <em>Life</em> is completing missions for the Agency, <em>life</em> is Morgan's cigarette smoke being blown into his face when she stands upwind of him, <em>life</em> is Nate's smile when they manage to rescue an innocent without having to resort to violence.</p>
<p><em>Life</em> is what someone has just tried to take from him. Because Nate has fallen to the ground, his chest pierced through with a wooden stake. </p>
<p>For one terrible tenth of a second, Nate's eyes are closed. It is the single most agonising part of Adam's existence. Something deep inside him <em>shatters</em>. He can hear nothing. He can say nothing. Everything is <em>red</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And he</p>
<p>is</p>
<p>n ot</p>
<p>hi m s e lf</p>
<p>a n  y m   o r    e</p>
<p><br/>There is a <em>crack</em>, a terrible tearing of flesh. There is the scent of blood, thick and heady yet strangely unappealing. Something turns to sludge in his hands. There is the sickening <em>crunch</em> of bone and metal beneath his feet, as if he were walking on corpses while wearing greaves.</p>
<p>(But he doesn't wear greaves anymore.)</p>
<p>(...Does he?)</p>
<p>His hands are very wet, steps slogging in a swamp of meat and liquid and cloth. Something prickles at his arm but he swats it away like a fly. Distantly there is shouting, and he thinks he hears his name. </p>
<p>"<em>Adam</em>. Adam! <em>ADAM!</em>"</p>
<p>Whatever spell that bound him comes undone. Adam is standing in a sea of corpses, and the colour returns to the world. </p>
<p>(<em>The only red left is on his hands</em>.)</p>
<p>"God dammit, Adam! What the hell is <em>wrong</em> with you? Get over here!" Morgan is yelling at him. When Adam looks at her, he sees wide, wary grey eyes and tense posture.</p>
<p>She is afraid, Adam realises. And Nate is...</p>
<p>
  <em>"Nate!" </em>
</p>
<p>Adam has never heard his own voice sound like that. But it doesn't matter. Not when Nate is-</p>
<p>"I'm...all right," says Nate, blood dripping between his teeth when he coughs. "It's not as...bad as it...looks."</p>
<p>Adam throws himself onto the pavement anyway, shaking hands hovering frantically over Nate's torso. "Y-you- you're-"</p>
<p>"It doesn't...hurt very much," Nate lies. "Morgan, could you...call Agent Lopez? I-I don't think...he'll be pleased, but we're in...no shape to get back on our own, and..."</p>
<p>He trails off, looking at the bodies, pain furrowing his brow. </p>
<p>"We'll have to...someone will have to..."</p>
<p>"Yeah, I'll go," says Morgan, scowling. "You sure, though?" She looks at Adam almost suspiciously, as if he were a stranger. She has not looked at him that way since they met, some seventy years before.</p>
<p>"I'm...I'm sure," says Nate, trying to smile. The blood takes what should be beautiful and makes it gruesome. "Thank you, Morgan."</p>
<p>Scowl fixed in place, Morgan speeds away to find a phone booth, though not without giving Adam one last distrustful glare, as if memorising what he looks like in excruciating detail so she can track him to the ends of the earth and kill him later if need be.</p>
<p>Adam does not have time to worry about that now. Not with Nate <em>impaled</em> before him, blood seeping into the concrete. Adam covers the sides of the puncture wound with his hands, surrounding the stake and applying pressure to slow the bleeding. At least this way Nate can't see him trembling.</p>
<p>"Adam," Nate says softly. "Adam...please. Look at me, <em>joonam</em>."</p>
<p>Adam does, and meets eyes glazed over with pain, but still full of concern and sorrow and--</p>
<p>(Not now. He <em>can't</em>. <em>Not now.</em>)</p>
<p>"Don't move," Adam orders him. "You shouldn't even speak. You're hurt."</p>
<p>"It's...important," says Nate, words beginning to slur. "Have to...tell you. Want...you to know. <em>Âsheghetam, aziz-e delam</em>."</p>
<p>(Normally Adam likes it when Nate starts losing his English. But not like this.)</p>
<p>(<em>Not like this</em>.)</p>
<p>Nate puts his hands over Adam's, and they are not as warm as they should be. It makes Adam's heart beat too fast, because he suddenly imagines those hands cold and stiff and dead. Nate's eyes are drifting shut, and Adam fears that they will never open again.</p>
<p>"Nate," says Adam, soft at first, then louder and louder. "Don't go to sleep, Nate. Nate, open your eyes! Nate, <em>please</em>! Nate! <em>Nathaniel!</em>"</p>
<p>But Nate does not listen. His hands slip away from Adam's. And Adam cannot reach him.</p>
<p>(<em>Adam cannot reach him.</em>)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>+++</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It takes, Adam later discovers, thirteen hours and twelve minutes for a normally healthy, relatively young vampire to partially recover from a staking. It takes thirteen hours and eighteen minutes before that vampire is allowed visitors, and the six-minute interim between is for the doctor to warn the rest of the team against staying with the patient too long, lest they be written up for breaking protocol.</p>
<p>For the first time since joining the Agency, Adam could not give one half of one tenth of one <em>iota</em> of a fuck about protocol. He <em>will</em> see Nate, and he will see him <em>now</em>. </p>
<p>The doctor disagrees.</p>
<p>"Agent Sewell has asked to see Agent Lopez alone, first," says the doctor, a smug little man with a large head. Adam clenches his jaw shut so hard he nearly breaks his teeth.</p>
<p>Lopez frowns, looks at Adam with concern, and goes inside. The industrial-strength steel and reinforced doors are so heavily layered that even a supernatural cannot hear through them. Adam can only pace back and forth in the narrow hallway, while Morgan watches him and smokes.</p>
<p>"You know he's covering for you, right?" she says bluntly. "He's gonna make something up and convince Lopez that you didn't lose your shit and kill thirty people."</p>
<p>"I did not kill thirty people," Adam says stiffly. "And Nate is neither dishonest nor callous enough to minimise our actions. He will tell Agent Lopez exactly what happened, and I will accept any reprimand the Agency feels is warranted."</p>
<p>"Getting cold up there on that pedestal?" Morgan sneers. "That crown of thorns tight enough for you, martyr?"</p>
<p>Adam chooses to ignore her and keeps marching back and forth until he can no longer bear the suspense. </p>
<p>"This is ridiculous," he growls. "They must be done by now."</p>
<p>Morgan pointedly looks away. It seems he will get no help from her. Fine, then.</p>
<p>Adam straightens his back, adjusts his jacket, inhales sharply through his nose.</p>
<p>And then he wrenches the door open, metal creasing beneath his fingers.</p>
<p>"Nate," he says, and, not unlike that night a few weeks ago, he crosses the threshold of the room that is not his own and <em>freezes</em>.</p>
<p>(That night a few weeks ago, after he and Nate had been together again in a moment of weakness. When Adam had called it so, they'd quarrelled-<em>Am I nothing but your weakness, Adam? Are we being foolish and nothing more?</em>-and they'd parted before the dawn.)</p>
<p>(But Nate did not hold it against him. One day of quiet introspection in his room later, he treated Adam with no less kindness, no less warmth than before.)</p>
<p>(Adam accepted it, and pretended that he had not wanted to shout back-<em>Yes, you are my weakness, when I'm with you I am weak, when I'm without you I'm even weaker, what have you done to me?</em>)</p>
<p>Nate smiles at him, tired, wan, but most of all, alive.</p>
<p>"It's nice to see you both," he says, as Morgan has appeared in the doorway behind Adam's shoulder. She shrugs under his arm to slink inside and lean her hip against a cabinet of medical supplies.</p>
<p>"Close the door, please," says Lopez, frowning at Morgan as she takes out another cigarette. "<em>Must</em> you?"</p>
<p>"Must," says Morgan. She always smokes more when distressed, a fact that Lopez has surely noticed by now. But he says nothing about it, and turns to Adam instead.</p>
<p>"Agent Sewell has told me what...transpired at the car park," he says slowly. "Care to give me your version of events?"</p>
<p>Adam stands to attention, hands behind his back. "Our team were ambushed by a squadron of hunters, having most likely heard of the local coven of vampires and assumed us to be part of it. They were well prepared, well-armed, but not in possession of DMB. One of them...Agent Sewell was..."</p>
<p>He falters, flounders. As always, Nate saves him.</p>
<p>"I was attacked by one of them with a stake. As I told you before, the injury had frightened me. I overreacted, and took the lives of those hunters. It's unjustifiable, but it was not done on Adam's order."</p>
<p>Nate and Lopez seem engaged in a staring contest, one which Lopez evidently loses.</p>
<p>"<em>Mierda</em>," he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "There's going to be a lot of paperwork. You can't keep doing this. I know you're friends, and friends look out for one another, but the Agency's rules exist for a reason. If you keep this up, the unit will be disbanded. You'll be desk-jockeys for eternity. Is that <em>really</em> what you want?"</p>
<p>"Of course not, Manuel," Nate says earnestly. "My actions were unconscionable, and I don't intend to make a habit of it. And I'm sure both Adam and Morgan would feel the same if they were in my place. We truly appreciate all you do for us, and we have no desire to jeopardise your standing in the Agency."</p>
<p>"<em>Ay, mi madre</em>--put away that butter-wouldn't-melt face, Sewell," Lopez grumbles good-naturedly. "If only it worked on the higher-ups, huh? Get some rest; I'll go start on the paperwork. Behave yourselves, all of you. I'd like to be able to see my wife again, preferably sometime <em>before</em> next year."</p>
<p>He leaves, swearing under his breath in Spanish when he notices what Adam has done to the door. Morgan nearly bites her cigarette in half the moment he's gone.</p>
<p>"I can't believe you took <em>all</em> the blame," she says, frowning at Nate. "You could at least have said that <em>I</em> did it. Maybe then Lopez would have believed you."</p>
<p>"Morgan..." Nate's expression falls. "You're a good agent, and Manuel knows that. He wouldn't assume that you would always be the one to lose control. Frankly, I don't think he'd like to believe any of us as violent as that. He has always seen the best in everyone, vampires included."</p>
<p>"Whatever," says Morgan, scrubbing the heel of her hand over her freckled cheek. "Just stop almost dying, or <em>else</em>." There is a tremor in her voice. Nate holds out his hand to her, and Adam finds an interesting crack along the wall to look at while allowing the others a moment of privacy.</p>
<p>Adam knows, of course, that Nate and Morgan are closer than Morgan would like to let anyone believe. It's a good thing, an excellent thing, something Adam normally feels no small amount of pride about, that his team are so perfectly cohesive, even if there are only three of them now. </p>
<p>But today it <em>bites</em>, makes something <em>itch</em> under his skin. He wants to shoo everyone else away, and keep Nate all to himself.</p>
<p>(Is he jealous?)</p>
<p>(He has never been <em>jealous</em> before.)</p>
<p>(But how can he be jealous of something that isn't his? How can he feel jealous about a relationship he doesn't have?)</p>
<p>(He has no right-)</p>
<p><br/>(He does not-)</p>
<p><br/>(He's-)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Adam?" </p>
<p>Adam pivots on his heel as though expecting a fight. But the hospital room is empty and plain, and Morgan has already left. The monitors <em>beep</em> idly, rhythmically. Nate lays in the hospital bed, propped up with pillows, bare feet poking out over the edge because of his height. </p>
<p>(Could they not give him socks, at least? Should Adam offer to fetch some for him?)</p>
<p>"I apologise," Adam says instead. "I was lost in thought."</p>
<p>"I noticed," says Nate, smiling. "Are you going to sit down?"</p>
<p>Adam frowns at the rickety chair against the wall. "I might break it."</p>
<p>"Sit here, then," says Nate. He pats the mattress next to his thigh. </p>
<p>Adam sighs. Of <em>course</em> Nate would only beckon him closer. But he obliges.</p>
<p>"I...I'm worried about you, Adam. Seeing you lose yourself in the car park...it was so unlike you. You frightened me a little, old friend."</p>
<p>"I would <em>never</em> hurt you," says Adam, startled by the vehemence in his own voice. "<em>Never</em>."</p>
<p>"I know you wouldn't," Nate says calmly. "That's not why I was afraid. I was afraid that you would realise what had happened and punish yourself, instead of using your anger in a more...constructive manner."</p>
<p>Adam shoots to his feet, but Nate catches his hand, and he cannot bring himself to tear it away. With a gentle tug, Nate pulls him back once more.</p>
<p>(And isn't that their entire relationship in five acts? Nate reaches out, Adam draws near; Adam darts away, Nate reels him in again. They meet in one sweet, perfect moment...and then the moment is broken, and the cycle begins anew.)</p>
<p>"I don't want you to hurt yourself," says Nate. "Please, Adam. Don't train until you collapse. Don't go on a dangerous mission alone. Give me your word that you'll be safe while I rest."</p>
<p>"I promise," says Adam, helpless, <em>helpless</em> in the face of Nate's requests. How could he say no? How could he say no, when it's the only thing Nate has ever really asked of him?</p>
<p>He does not assume, expect, demand.</p>
<p>He only asks.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(And Adam wants to <em>give</em>--)</p>
<p>(Adam wants to give <em>anything</em>, he would give <em>everything</em>--)</p>
<p>(...But he has nothing.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>(he has nothing worth giving)</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"Thank you, <em>azizam</em>," says Nate, relief lighting his eyes. "I'll rest easier now. And...I'm sorry. For what I said before, when I was...I-I hope I didn't make you uncomfortable. I would never wish to do that to you, of all people." He squeezes Adam's hand. "I care deeply for Morgan and Manuel, of course. But you are my dearest friend. I should hate to ruin that with my...with my..."</p>
<p>(He does not say <em>feelings</em>. He does not say <em>emotions</em>. He does not say <em>affections</em>.)</p>
<p>(He does not say <em>love</em>.)</p>
<p>(But Adam hears it all. He hears it anyway.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(And somewhere, deep inside his cold crumbling heart, Adam feels that he could <em>weep</em>.)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>"There is nothing you could do to spoil our friendship," says Adam. His voice is quiet, almost tender. "I won't allow anything to come between us. I give you my word, Nate. I will stay by your side for as long as you will have me."</p>
<p>And Nate's smile is so sweet, <em>so sweet</em>. </p>
<p>And Adam is lost to him all over again.</p>
<p>He ignores the plain hospital room, the cracked wall, the old linoleum, the beeping of machinery, and cups Nate's face in his hands to bring their lips together, to taste that smile.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <em>(and it is sweet, oh, it is sweet...)</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
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